Oatmeal

Halfway into the autumn school holiday, it is milder again so I went for a tempo run around the lake. Unfortunately, the snow cannon has already turned parts of my usual trail into a skiing track so there will be slightly less elevation gain going forward.

Before heading out, I made some AXA Steel Cut Oats and read a most fascinating story about Damascus in the latest issue of Monocle. Meanwhile in Beirut, the banks are preparing to open on Friday after being closed for the last two weeks but capital controls are expected to be implemented in order to avoid a run on the Lebanese pound.

Quicksilver

With the temperature at -12 degrees outside, I did not feel like repeating yesterday's long run but instead took the bus to USM for some foam rolling, strength training and five fast kilometres on the treadmill.

Down in Lebanon, Saad Hariri resigned as prime minister last night but the situation remains unresolved. Unless there is an outbreak of violence, Ally and I are still planning on going but we will of course monitor the situation, primarily through Al Jazeera's excellent coverage.

In lighter news, Seth James DeMoor has decided to join Andreja and some fifty thousand other runners this weekend in New York. With Amsterdam only two weeks ago, that is of course something you should not try at home...

Post-Jakarta

Slightly jetlagged, I woke up at 4 a.m. to the sound of an aircraft passing overhead. Unlike down in Kalmar (not to mention when I was living on the Eastern seaboard of the US), it is relatively rare to hear aircrafts here. Checking my phone, it was apparently a 777-300ER belong to Aeroflot on its way from Washington D.C. to Moscow Sheremetyevo.

That outside world felt very distant as I made my morning coffee and laced up my Finnish winter shoes. While still dark in the forest, I decided to not take my headlamp but rather let my eyes adapt to the darkness which soon turned into twilight. Running 21k in an “endurance pace” of 5:25 min/km, snow mixed with sunshine, and I could not help but feeling slightly disappointed about not being able to run Beirut marathon in ten days. At least, the news coming from Lebanon are encouraging with young people coming together across old sectarian divides and few violent incidents.

Gnocchi and studs

After sleeping for eleven solid hours, the world was all white and icy. Trying to keep my heart rate around 145, I jogged around the lake at daybreak in my Finnish VJ Sarva Xante with carbide steel studs that I had such great use for last year.

This week, the school is closed so there will be no biking back and forth to Innertavle. In fact, I have even applied for official vacation so, with that in mind, I made oven roasted vegetables with gnocchi and lemon zest as a slow Italian lunch.

Turkish delight

Sleeping my way across the Indian subcontinent, I woke up somewhere over Turkmenistan. Like in the other direction, I was able to get an exit row seat which is heaven for my long legs. Then, before I knew it, breakfast was served and I was back at Istanbul’s grand new airport for a shower, some coffee and the last pages of “Call me by your name”.

From the movie, I very much remembered the conversation that Elio is having with his dad after Oliver has left Italy. “Withdrawal can be a terrible thing when it keeps us awake at night, and watching others forget us sooner than we’d want to be forgotten is no better. We rip out so much of ourselves to be cured of things faster than we should that we go bankrupt by the age of thirty and have less and less to offer each time we start with someone new”.

With a bit of luck, I will be back in Istanbul with Ally in ten days from now on our way to Beirut. Looking up at the departures board, the world really comes together here, from Accra to Washington D.C. with Samarkand and so many other places that remain unexplored thrown in between.

Annapurna

As Kilian Jornet wins the final race of the Golden Trail Series in Nepal, I go for a slow morning jog around the rice paddies of Ubud. Compared to downtown Jakarta, I think I could get used to running in these surroundings but the heat clearly affects me. I guess I would acclimatize myself if would stay longer but already this evening I will be on a flight into that long Northern winter.

Alila Ubud x 3

The Angry Ubudian

After a first night at the sea in Sanur, we travelled up to Ubud where the Alila has recently joined the World of Hyatt programme, making it possible to use Hyatt points for a villa stay with grand views of the valley. Poolside, and what a pool that is, they served a fabulous drink called “The Angry Ubudian” consisting of chili infused vodka, fresh mango, lime juice, club soda and a chili rim. With monkeys in every tree and thousands of colourful birds flying in the sunrise, it truly feels a world away from Umeå.

Cancellation

This morning, I woke up to the news that Beirut Marathon has been cancelled after the last week of anti-government street protests. Given what is currently going on in Lebanon and its neighbouring countries, a marathon is of course rather secondary but still the race was a symbol of normality amidst all the regional turbulence.

For the moment, the Swedish Foreign Ministry is not advising against travelling to Beirut which means that, unless the situation deteriorates further, Ally and I are still good to go. Especially in a time like this, it simply feels important not to cancel.

Treadmill training

When living under the smog in Seoul, I used to go down in the basement and run 5k on the treadmill now and then. These days, almost all of my running is outdoors, unless it is really cold or I am just doing a quick warm-up before strength training at USM. Still, for all its drabness, treadmill running has an abstract purity to it, like that everything just comes down to your motivation and perseverance. With the traffic and the heat outside, it will still be hard to hit 80 km this week but at least I just ran ten more while looking out over the blue hotel pool. Tomorrow afternoon we are off to Bali with AirAsia. 

Three women

Jakarta is apparently notorious for its traffic but, after my successful run yesterday, I felt ready to take on grander challenges. At first, I had actually been thinking of going up to the Sentul Highlands for some trail running but the logistics of that, especially as I do not speak any Indonesian, turned out to be overwhelming. Instead I thought that, after exploring the white colonial buildings of Old Jakarta and the seaside promenade, I would run back to the hotel, which according to Google Maps would be roughly a half marathon.

In 34 degrees heat with scooters coming fast from every possible direction, I guess I should be happy for the fact that I managed to even run 6 km before I succumbed to reason and took a taxi to the National Monument from where I then ran the last 3 km. Rarely, if ever, has a hotel gym pitcher with cucumber water tasted so good.

With this madness behind me, some afternoon pool time seems to be in order. Just before boarding at Arlanda, I was able to find a copy of Lisa Taddeo's Three women of which I have read several very positive reviews. While I would have preferred the English original, the translation is excellent and I think this is a book that will stay with me.

Post graduation

Last night I had a chance to catch up with a brilliant former student from HUFS in Korea who now works for the Indonesian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Enjoying the open air views from Skye, a bar located on the 56th floor in one of the many newly built skyscrapers here in Jakarta, we had obvious reasons to reflect on the contradictions of development but also time for a more personal conversation about religion. As a teacher, it is always such a privilege to meet students 5-10 years later and hear how their lives have evolved after leaving university.

Monument

From Boston to Berlin, few things beat a morning city run. As such, I set out shortly after 6 am to explore the nearby National Monument Complex and its promised 80 hectare park. Coming from Tomtebo (sic!), it is always a shock to suddenly be running through a sea of scooters and people and having to run in circles at the intersections but at least I managed to run almost 9 km in the heat. Now time for breakfast.

Bay of Bengal

Flying out over the Bay of Bengal, I am irreversibly awake and decide to walk back to the galley to ask for some black coffee. Returning to 24B, the exit row seat that I was lucky enough to secure, I listen again to the same Comrades podcast. Somehow, I felt that its story of ghosts, lives in exile and anti-apartheid activism deserved that.

Afterwards, as I connect to the inflight Internet, I receive an e-mail from a former neighbour and journalist in South Korea who is now working for the French school in Seoul. For the moment, she is writing a magazine article on climate change education for kids and it reminds me again of how important these issues are for the future.

‘Working at a school now, I hear children repeating things that their parents said, like "the Earth won't exist anymore", "we will all die" etc., which I found really sad. And yet, climate change is a real and urgent issue to tackle and educating the new generation is one of the keys.’

Over the last few years, I feel that the debate on climate change has lost whatever proportionality it may have had, that it has become this overriding apocalyptic frame that lacks any meaningful discussion about causal mechanisms (like, how exactly do you think that your life in Umeå will “end” due to climate change?) and that, instead of evaluating the relative merits of different solutions, we have come to treat climate change as purely a moral issue. In fact, listening to some of the more agitated voices, it is as if the “climate” has even replaced God as the ultimate moral adjudicator. As such, I think we are seriously at risk of losing track of our possibilities and what we can positively achieve as a planetary civilization.

Comrades

Sipping on a gin and tonic on the flight down to Istanbul, I finally got around to listen to the new Strava podcast about the Comrades ultra marathon. Going back to 1921, Comrades is a 89 km race between Durban and ‎Pietermaritzburg‎ in South Africa. The direction of the race alternates every year so there is an “up” and “down” year respectively. With a strict cut-off time of twelve hours, just completing the race is obviously a great achievement.

The first time I heard about Comrades was at work where I have a very cool colleague who has been running all kinds of races over the years, including Comrades. It is a bit funny but I can still remember when I was just getting to know her and she told me about a mountain marathon that she had been running during the summer. At the time, I was not at all into the sport and I think my reaction was one of curious disbelief about the whole concept of a “mountain marathon”. Little did I know that I, only a few years later, would have run my first ultra and be dreaming of running Comrades myself...

Organic dreams

Shortly after 1 pm, Folke Viking departed Umeå Airport and set course towards Stockholm. As always, the last hours before leaving had been a mad rush of cleaning, cooking and packing but I still tried to follow Seth James DeMoor as he ran along the canals of Amsterdam. For the first 21k, Seth was going really strong, running at a 3:10 min/km pace that would put him well within the Olympic qualifying window. But around the 30 km mark, something happened and by 40 km, he had slowed down to a 4:47 min/km pace (which, funny enough, is just a bit quicker than my goal pace for Beirut). Finishing in 2 hours and 23 minutes, Seth was merely four minutes too slow for his Olympic Trials qualification which I guess feels like a real bummer, especially considering the mad amounts of training he has put in over the last months. Anyhow, it again shows what a challenge the marathon distance is and how easy it is to go out too hard or not take in enough fuel (as I failed to do when I ran Amsterdam last year).

As for fuel, Mikkeller just released a great new SAS-only lager called “Organic dreams” which I had a chance to sample on the flight down to Arlanda. Now I have about twenty minutes until check-in with Turkish Airlines opens and I can print that Jakarta boarding pass.

Weekend races

Next weekend, it is time to “run the skyline” in Frankfurt but already yesterday, my friend Elias was racing those eight laps around Växjösjön, completing his first marathon in 3 hours and 58 minutes. And today, after one week of tapering and filming Eliud Kipchoge in Vienna, Seth James DeMoor will also race his first (!) road marathon in Amsterdam, as he aims to qualify for the Olympic Marathon Trials in Atlanta by running in under 2 hours and 19 minutes (after coming second in the Pikes Peak Ascent, I think he will actually do it).

And then, in exactly three weeks, it will be my turn to join the others and sink into that pain cave as I, hopefully, break the slightly less symbolic 3:30 barrier in Beirut...

Stand up for nuclear

While I jet off to Bali, my sister, who is six years younger and clearly the better iteration, will join thousands of others around the world in standing up for nuclear. In Stockholm, the demonstration starts at 11 am at Mynttorget and is organized by “Nuclear Pride Coalition” and a number of other organizations, including Women in Nuclear Sweden. Yesterday, some of the organizers, including Hans Blix, wrote an op-ed in Svenska Dagbladet that summarizes some key points in a Swedish context.

After long deliberation, France just announced plans to build six new large reactors. While barely sufficient to keep their low-carbon grid intact as other plants are coming up for retirement, it is still a hopeful sign that the tide is finally turning. Also in the Netherlands, more and more people are becoming wary of following Germany’s path of long-term fossil dependence.

Packing

Last weekend, Eddie showed me a trail near his new school which reminded me of where I used to go running when I was living in Gothenburg a decade ago. Lacing up my Reebok All Terrain shoes, I thought I would give it a shot before I start packing. All in all, it turned into a nice 8 km run, bringing my total volume for this week up to 70 km. So now, I only have ten more kilometres to go before I am fully ready to leave for Indonesia.

Today, at work, I picked up my old copy of Karl Popper’s The Open Society and its Enemies which made me think of the impact it had on me as an undergraduate student. Still, it seems no less relevant for the debates that I am having today. As I head upstairs to pack my blue swimming trunks, I thought I should cite a few lines:

“This sweep, this extreme radicalism of the Platonic approach (and of the Marxian as well) is, I believe, connected with æstheticism, i.e. with the desire to build a world which is not only a little better and more rational than ours, but which is free from all its ugliness […] But here I must protest. I do not believe that human lives may be made the means for satisfying an artist’s desire for self-expression. We must demand, rather, that every man should be given, if he wishes, the right to model his life himself”

Badwater humblebrag

Last night, I was watching a documentary about “Badwater 135” which is, yes, a 135 miles (or 217 km) footrace through three mountain ranges in the Californian desert. Featuring 4450 meters of cumulative ascent and daytime temperatures well above 40 degrees, it is marketed as the “most demanding and extreme running race offered anywhere on the planet”.

With the start of the race in Death Valley, I was reminded of my own trip there back in 2005. Looking through old photos, I was struck by what difference the last few years of running have made in terms of my posture and generally well-being. While I sometimes, like this morning when running 10k through the cold forest mist with only my head torch to guide me, may briefly doubt why I am doing all of this, seeing what difference consistency has made, I definitely feel motivated to go on. As for Badwater 135, it is obviously a slippery slope. Right now it is so far beyond my ability, both physically and mentally, that it is not even on the radar but, hey, give it a few years ;-) First, however, I have to survive South Devon Ultra in February.

River lunch run

Before giving my annual guest lecture on green political theory for the graduate students, I was able to squeeze in a lunch run along the River Ume with Elin. With only four days left until Indonesia, I am having a stroke of “resfeber” and, as such, a run always helps to clear my mind.

In the morning, I was working on my new article project about climate change and the future of high-trust societies. My friend Leigh Phillips once came up with the term “collapse-porn addicts” to describe the obsessive interest that degrowthers and others take in the end of liberalism. Instead of strengthening our collective institutions and restoring elite interest in public affairs, their main message has been one of populist confrontation and a profound distrust in our ability to find common solutions. As such, I am thinking that “social trust” may be one of the more useful venues for articulating an alternative optimistic account of the future, one in which we do not all become localists and preppers but rather seek to ensure that the open society does not fail in the first place.

Autumn awesomeness

As the days are getting shorter, I am able to do both sunrise and sunset runs around the lake. Even if -6 was a bit on the cold side this morning, it had its magic and now I am inside making moose meatballs with my signature sherry vinegar cream sauce.

Wet snow

While the temperature down in Kalmar is still 12-15 degrees, it has been snowing all night here in Umeå so I am thankful for those Nike Odyssey React Shield shoes for keeping me dry as I go for a morning run around the lake. Although reluctantly, it seem like I am also finally learning that easy days should be easy.

With my dad turning 70 today, I had actually been thinking of going down to Kalmar myself but, with Indonesia coming up in just a week from today and Beirut only two weeks after that, it feels like there is already a lot of travelling this fall.

Right now, I am back with the one and only Gennaro Contaldo, cooking his “family ragu” with lots of fresh basil for lunch.

Kipchoge did it!

Two years after coming up 25 seconds short in Monza, Eliud Kipchoge truly did it today in the Wiener Prater, running a full marathon in 1 hours, 59 minutes and 40 seconds. Watching the live feed on Youtube I almost started crying as Kipchoge broke free from his pace keepers and smashed through that historic barrier to hug his wife.

Meanwhile in Umeå, I am at 82 km of running this week and my legs are beginning to feel slightly heavy. As such, I thought it would be a good idea to go for a faster afternoon run to see if I could still sustain my planned pace for Beirut. Perhaps thanks to Kipchoge but I was actually a bit surprised by how easy it felt to keep every split well under 5 minutes. As for tomorrow though, I am still undecided if I will go for a long run or not as it would take me above 100 km and I do not want to risk any injuries. At least, my new Bola compression socks were absolutely awesome, regardless of how stupid I may look.

INEOS 1:59

Saturday morning, gentle snowfall as I go for a morning run while waiting for the INEOS 1:59 challenge to start in Vienna. For the first time of the year, I bring my head torch along. Lighting my way through the forest, I could not be more excited about the season that lies ahead.

An American pancake or two later, we are 26 minutes into the race, so far so good, right now the Ingebrigtsen brothers are pacing Kipchoge. The apparent ease in their strides is incredible, especially considering how superhumanly hard it is to run at this pace, even for a hundred meters.

Bagghar

While Tintin has a long precedence here on Rawls & Me, I am now rediscovering the global adventures of this Belgian journalist together with Eddie. Coming ashore in the fictional port city of Bagghar in French Colonial Morocco, “reality” appears unusually malleable as I take a sip of a new chardonnay from Stellenbosch that appeared last month at Systembolaget.

Earlier today, I found myself drawn into another energy/climate debate, this time on LinkedIn (which in itself is not so surprising given that I have discontinued all other forms of social media, in part to avoid precisely these kinds of debates). However, like with the climate deniers, I am doubtful whether engaging with the 100% renewables crowd is actually meaningful, it is simply a self-contained belief system. At least many of them are becoming increasingly open with that their vision of the future depends on dramatically “reducing population size - through voluntary, non-coercive measures of course”.

Of course.

Bada bing, bada boom

Over the last months, I have grown increasingly fond of Seth James DeMoor’s Youtube channel on all things running related. Every day, he posts a new video at 5 a.m. Mountain Time with shoe reviews, scenic outdoor photography and some very relatable moments from his life as a parent of three young boys. As such, I thought I wanted to support his channel by buying one of his black racing singlets with the iconic “Seek beauty, work hard & love each other” print.

Back at USM for 5k on the treadmill and some strength training, I am already at 63 km of running this week with no knee pain whatsoever, so I am feeling optimistic about the month of training that remains until Beirut, especially as I have found some promising running spots in Jakarta.

Qualified teacher

In March last year I was promoted to “qualified teacher” (or “meriterad lärare” as it is called in Swedish). Last night, the university organized a ceremony followed by a full-course dinner to celebrate those who have been promoted for their teaching excellence over the last two years. With a lot of inspiring conversations with other teachers who are also committed to education, it really renewed my energy and excitement about the profession that we share. Beyond last night, something tells me that I will not be wearing the lapel pin stating that I am a qualified teacher though ;-)

Extreme biking

This autumn has been one of extreme biking. It is now more than a month since I started my routine of biking up to 20 km every day, some of which with the ageing German trailer. While this sudden increase in volume may have contributed to my earlier knee problems, it is now feeling surprisingly doable even as the winter is closing in. However, seeing the morning caravan of 4WDs going into town, I am noticing that I am becoming increasingly radicalized in my anti-car philosophy, not so much for its environmental impact, as for the worst possible perfectionist reasons. Luckily, I am generally good at keeping these things to myself (writing about them here does not count, right?).

Linearity

Though “linearity” has never been a defining feature of Rawls & Me, my mind definitely drifted off to Indonesia when I was looking through the weather forecast for the coming days. Luckily, I was able to get a pair of Craft “hydro tights” at 50% off from Boozt so I will at least stay warm when running through all the sleet and, with the successful test of my waterproof gloves this morning, I also think I now have all the equipment I need to run South Devon Ultra in February next year.

As for Bali, I ultimately decided to use points to stay at the Alila Ubud that recently joined the World of Hyatt programme. While the trip will be short, I am very much looking forward to seeing a bit more of the interior of the island than last time around. In any case, it is actually hard to grasp that I have this great trip coming up in just ten days from today.

Easy does it

At 118 km so far this month, I am currently number 18 out of 691 in the Swedish edition of the Strava Distance Running Challenge which obviously makes me feel quite happy about my overall mileage. But I am a bit concerned that I am running most of those kilometres at a too high intensity. Often I find myself rushing back to cook for the kids or replying to some urgent work e-mail.

Ideally, I should keep my heart rate around 140 for most of my training. With this in mind, I set out for a low-intensity long run this morning which also gave me a chance to test my new waterproof super gloves that I plan to use when running South Devon Ultra.

Retrotopia

In one last push, I finished marking all the exams at 5 a.m. this morning so, with the grades now submitted, I can turn to the more philosophical tasks at hand. These include composing an abstract for the conference “Political Ecologies of Environmental Future-Making” due to take place in Brighton next summer and locating the literature that I need for my next article project on “nuclear democracy”.

The other day, my friend Gabriel reminded me of the existence of Patrick Deneen who is one of all those conservatives who distrust the future and emancipatory values. Like with degrowthers, buying their books always gives me double feelings but now a copy of Why Liberalism Failed is on its way from Bokus.

For now, however, I pour up some Americano and read a bit in Zygmunt Bauman’s Retrotopia while waiting for the third season of StarTrek Discovery ;-)

Undecided

Whenever I browse the Internet, I am bombarded by personalized ads telling me to buy a pair of Hoka Rincons in the “Barbados Cherry/Plein Air” colour scheme. Funny enough, the ads are not personalized enough to take into account the fact that none of the stores have them in my size. And, for some odd reason, Hoka’s own store, which happens to have them in size 47, does not ship to Sweden (it does ship to most other EU countries though). So, for now, I am back with my Craft V175 Lite II as I go for two loops around the lake in an effort to push my weekly volume up to 80 km for the second week in a row. Given how soon Beirut Marathon is, I would ideally be doing a really long test run in these shoes to see how they are holding up beyond 30 km but, at the same time, I think it is wise to be a bit careful with my knee.

Indonesia

Back in May, our original autumn travel plans got cancelled when Anna was accepted to present her research at a conference in Jakarta. Thus, instead of Lamu and East Africa, we are now scheduled to leave for Indonesia in two weeks' time. While I have been to Bali once back in 2011, this will be my first trip to Java and the country’s capital. With a population of more than ten million people, it is the fastest-sinking capital in the world, something that has triggered the construction of an enormous ring dyke, a project that I am excited to learn more about. Otherwise, beyond the compulsory city run, I plan to spend most of the time when Anna is attending her conference with my new article project before we both head over to Bali for a couple of days of vacation.

No, Morocco is not a ”climate leader”

Swedish Public Service picked up on the latest report from “Climate Action Tracker” (CAT), a consortium based in Germany which, under the pretence of providing “independent scientific analysis”, tracks government climate action against the Paris Agreement.

Studying the methodology behind these reports, I do not even know where to begin. I have written at length before about the importance of considering the global scalability of different low-carbon energy sources and why for instance a country like Norway, despite having a large share of clean hydroelectric power, cannot be considered a “leader” as its relatively low-emissions depend on the existence of a finite number of fast-flowing and dammable rivers (a resource that most other countries do not have). I have also written before on why sustained global poverty cannot be seen as a realistic (or morally acceptable) solution to climate change. When you put those two things together, and consider the strong anti-nuclear bias of CAT (including its total disinterest in nuclear innovation), it is not difficult understand why they end up with pretty strange results.

In the article, it is suggested that Morocco is one of only two countries, the other being Gambia (!), that is doing enough to reach the targets of the Paris Agreement. Considering that Morocco’s emissions, according to CAT’s own calculations, are expected to rise with nearly 50% over the coming decade, something unusual is clearly going on here. The answer as to why Morocco is seen as role model is apparently its large investments in solar power which, when solely looking at “installed capacity”, is pretty impressive indeed with investments of up to 9 billion USD and 2,000 megawatt of capacity divided between five mega-scale solar projects. However, as should be clear by now, installed capacity does not equate actually produced electricity (due to, among other things, the physical phenomenon commonly referred to as “night”). That is why Morocco is also busy building a number of new thermal coal power plants. Unsurprisingly, such subtleties are lost on our German friends who find Morocco’s expansion of coal power to be “out of step with decreasing technology costs for renewable energy”, a statement that only makes sense when you just consider the marginal cost of providing one additional kWh to an existing electricity grid and not the total system cost of providing reliable electricity throughout the year.

Actually, I do not know why I am writing all this more than to vent some steam. Maybe in the faint hope that Swedish Public Service would do some basic research before passing on these kinds of “scientific reports” as news.

Getting it done

With only a month remaining until Beirut Marathon, I am obviously anxious to get at least one long run per week done. This morning, the real feel temperature was -6 degrees but the skies were clearing so I was treated to brilliant foliage as I set out shortly before 7 a.m.

Now, it is Anna's turn to be out running around the lake while I am making American pancakes with maple syrup to offset some of those 1,780 kcal :-)

Capitalist realism

As I forgot to celebrate "Tag der Deutschen Einheit" yesterday, I at least had to pick up a cinnamon bun downtown to commemorate the fact that today is “National Cinnamon Bun Day” in Sweden. As often with cultural capitalism, I am uncertain if it even makes sense to talk about irony anymore.

Otherwise, I am half-way through my exams and, as such, I awarded myself with a mini-triathlon with 1,000 meters of swimming and 5k of treadmill running at Navet. Now I have to come up with some new set of exam questions for those students who failed this time around and head over to Hörsal F where my colleague Elin Stark is about to defend her PhD thesis.

The impossibility of cosmopolitanism in one village

One of the things I write about in my forthcoming book chapter is the impossibility of “cosmopolitanism in one village”. Drawing on the work of Stephen Quilley and others, it can be argued that any substantial rematerialization and relocalization of the economy, as envisaged by degrowth advocates, would also undermine the very foundations of emancipatory values and self-expression. While degrowthers like to paint rosy pictures of what “micro-scale localism” would entail, it is fair to guess that such a world of endless agrarian poverty and material hardship would also be one of resurging survivalist values and traditional forms of domination.

When writing my chapter I tried to be mindful about not creating strawmen. However, when I received a link to a Youtube video (still above) by the Polish environmental activist Karolina Goswami who is advocating for Indian subsistence farming in response to climate change, I think my argument was actually quite spot on. I only wish that more people, who dare to go beyond the cheap anti-capitalist rhetoric, would realize that degrowth is about the transition to a completely different society and the social enforcement of a very limiting world-view. As I have said many times before, if it was only a matter of taking one flight less per year or reducing overall economic activity by 10, 20 or even 30 percent, then degrowth would be a no-brainer. But it is not.

That is why we need to look in the exact opposite direction to a future that builds on, rather than tries to reverse, the broad emancipatory forces of the last two centuries and, as such, makes possible a world where everyone can live a modern life.

Back to basics

With my knee feeling better, I am trying to bring back some volume again. Thus, I started the morning with a tempo run in 4:45 min/km pace followed by a slower afternoon run. Today, I also received a long-overdue update to my wardrobe in the form of a long-sleeved Nike running top in “pueblo brown” which I hope will keep me warm over the coming months, in addition to adding some well-needed colour to my running attire (I should say that it looks better in reality than in the picture).

Anyhow, I really should be marking exams rather than blogging. Once on the other side, I have the latest issue of Condé Nast Traveller to look forward to.

Lasagne al forno x 3

Mental toughness

In a weird way, I like to go running in the freezing rain. Just like reading “news” about the ongoing wind power expansion in Sweden, it helps me develop a kind of mental toughness. As for the wind though, I am not sure if I can really contain my frustration. The article, which is basically PR material from the Swedish wind industry, explains how Sweden is uniquely suited for wind power since it is so sparsely populated and how electricity, which is now relatively cheap and abundant, will become more intermittent and expensive in the future and thus enable a market for demand-side management technologies. None of this is written with any irony, as if it was something good that Sweden pursues technological pathways that are not globally scalable or that electricity, which is crucial to drive overall decarbonization, becomes scarce.

Anyhow, after biking down to Navet, the triathlon continued with 1,000 meters in the pool. While I definitely have to work on my technique, I really enjoy these breaks from the running.